As is known, operating electronic components produce heat, which should be removed in an effective manner in order to maintain device junction temperatures within desirable limits, with failure to do so resulting in excessive component temperatures, potentially leading to thermal runaway conditions. Several trends in the electronics industry have combined to increase the importance of thermal management, including in technologies where thermal management has traditionally been less of a concern, such as complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. In particular, the need for faster and more densely packed circuits has had a direct impact on the importance of thermal management. For instance, power dissipation, and therefore heat production, increases as device operating frequencies increase. Also, increased operating frequencies may be possible at lower device junction temperatures. Further, as more and more components are packed onto a single chip, heat flux (Watts/cm2) increases, resulting in the need to dissipate more power from a given size chip, module, or system. These trends have combined to create applications where traditional air cooling methods alone, such as methods using air cooled heat sinks with heat pipes or vapor chambers, are unable to remove sufficient heat.
The need to cool current and future high heat load, high heat flux electronic components thus mandates the continued development of more aggressive thermal management techniques using, for instance, liquid cooling. Various types of liquid coolants and liquid-cooling approaches are known, and provide different cooling capabilities. For instance, fluids such as refrigerants or other dielectric liquids (e.g., fluorocarbon liquids) exhibit lower thermal conductivity and specific heat properties, compared to liquids such as water or other aqueous fluids, but may be placed in direct physical contact with electronic components and their associated interconnects without adverse effects, such as corrosion or electrical short circuits. Other cooling liquids, such as water or other aqueous fluids, exhibit superior thermal conductivity and specific heat properties compared to dielectric fluids. However, water-based coolants must be separated from physical contact with the electronic components and interconnects, since corrosion and electrical short circuit problems are otherwise likely to result. This is typically accomplished by flowing the liquid coolant through a liquid-cooled heat sink or cold plate.
Various liquid-cold heat sink configurations have been disclosed in the art. Typically, a liquid-cooled heat sink is a thermally conductive structure, being fabricated completely of metal, and having one or more channels or passageways formed within the heat sink for flowing liquid coolant through the heat sink. Examples of such heat sinks are disclosed in commonly assigned, U.S. Letters Pat. No. 7,751,918 B2, issued Jul. 6, 2010. Although very effective, such all-metal, liquid-cooled heat sinks could be relatively expensive to fabricate, as well as be relatively heavy, depending on the size of the electronic component(s) or assembly to be cooled. Thus, addressed herein, in part, is a goal of lowering heat sink structure costs, and providing lighter-weight heat sink structures for facilitating cooling of one or more electronic components of an electronic system.